


still a little bit of your taste in my mouth

by voodoochild



Category: The Hour
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, F/M, Obsessive-Compulsive, Past Relationship(s), Spanish Civil War, Wartime Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study in why Randall doesn't drink whiskey.  (Spoilers up until 2.03 of "The Hour". Major ones. Consider yourselves warned.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	still a little bit of your taste in my mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ceebee, for her prompt of "Lix/Randall, whiskey". Title from Damien Rice's "Cannonball".

After Barcelona, he never drinks whiskey.

Bourbon, frequently. Gin, when he's feeling self-loathing. Wine with dinner and when his co-workers insist upon dragging him out.

Whiskey is Lix. Whiskey is four cities in two days, hours stuck in the back of a dusty truck, camera on prominent display so they're not mistaken for militia ( _loyales, nacionales_ , it doesn't matter). Whiskey is choking on gunpowder and blood, arse-deep in combat, chasing it with the taste and smell of her. 

When he returns to England, it seems he cannot escape it, or her. She stands next to him in the control room, teacup smelling of Darjeeling and single-malt. She steals his books (she always did, steals and reads and dog-ears the pages just to annoy him) and replaces them with bottles of Tullamore Dew. She passes around a bottle of her best when they break the story on Munich Air, toasting to the dead. He very nearly refuses it, but takes a swallow.

The burn - and the memories - bring tears to his eyes, and he blinks them back behind his glasses. He begs away from the group, reminds Bel of Monday's editorial meeting and returns Freddie's copy on the tube strike. He flees to his office, closes himself in wood and darkness and nineteen years' worth of regret. He leaves his cup there, else he'll drain it, pour another, finish the bottle. 

(He's been careful. No more than two drinks, unless extreme circumstances are called for. When Lix gave him Sophia's birth certificate, he went back to his flat and got drunk for the first time in years.)

"What is it?" Her voice comes from the doorway. She's never bothered with knocking, never cared if he'd shut a door or not. "Randall, are you all right?"

His mouth still tastes of the whiskey, even from a single sip. Nothing can disguise that or distract him from it - sixteen paperclips lined up, four pencils by size, Telex reports laid out in chronological order. The behavior should be making him feel better, and it's not.

Absently, he turns his telephone to face toward the wall - once, twice, three times should do it - and answers her. "I haven't drunk whiskey since '38. Lost my taste for it."

She inhales sharply, draws herself straighter as she always does when he brings up the past. "You could have said no."

"I missed it. The breath-stealing burn of it down my throat, the bitter aftertaste. I hadn't realized how much."

He isn't talking about the whiskey, and she knows it. She shifts imperceptibly, right to left foot, then the reverse, finally approaching his desk. She reaches out as if to tweak one of his pencils out of line, but stops herself. That, more than anything tells him how much she's changed; she'd have done it without thinking in the past. Now, she watches him more closely and steps around him more carefully, and sometimes he regrets that. Misses the disorder she brought to his life.

There is a touch to his wrist, turning his chair to face her. She leans down, hesitating a few breaths away from his mouth, and the corner of her lips quirk up in invitation. He takes it, pulling her down, his hands cupping her cheeks. Her mouth opens in a sigh, as impossibly familiar as the Darjeeling-and-single-malt taste that hits his tongue. Heady and sharp and perfect, it makes his head spin - _she_ makes his head spin.

Nineteen years, and he itches to pull her into his lap, back her against his desk, anything to feel her against him. But if he's learned anything from these years, from Barcelona, it's that she will not be pushed, caged. This hangs on her wishes, not his. He takes one last too-short, too-bittersweet taste of her, fingers combing through the small curls at the base of her neck, then pulls back. She makes a small noise in the back of her throat that has always meant " _please, more_ ", but he will not have her like this.

"Mine or yours?" he asks, and she draws back, adjusting her coat. 

"Do you have a proper-sized bed this time 'round?"

He buttons his suit jacket, gets to his feet and reaches for his overcoat. "By your standards? Probably not. Yours, then."

She doesn't hold his hand, wrap her arm around his waist, all the things she might have done once upon a time in another country. But her gaze is heated and he knows that tilt to her mouth, knows what the slow flick of her tongue over her lower lip means. 

The taste is just like she remembers, too.


End file.
